Jose Joaquin de Herrera

Jose Joaquin de Herrera (23 February 1792-10 February 1854) was President of Mexico from 12 to 21 September 1844 (succeeding Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna and preceding Valentin Canalizo), from 6 December 1844 to 30 December 1845 (succeeding Canalizo and preceding Mariano Paredes), and from 3 June 1848 to 15 January 1851 (succeeding Manuel de la Pena y Pena and preceding Mariano Arista). He was a Liberal Party of Mexico member.

Biography
Jose Joaquin de Herrera was born in Xalapa, Veracruz, New Spain in 1792, and he entered the royalist army in 1809. He fought the Mexican insurgents, and he was part of the expedition to retake Acapulco from the rebels. He retired from the army in 1820 as a Lieutenant-Colonel, and he supported Agustin de Iturbide's rise to power in 1821 as the appointed commander of a regiment of Iturbide's Three Guarantees Army. Herrera took in the 1823 revolution against Iturbide, and he served as Minister of War from 1823 to 1824. He was never an ally of Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, whom he saw as absolutist and arbitrary, and General Valentin Canalizo appointed him as acting President for a week in 1844. From December 1844 to December 1845, he again served as interim President, and his term saw the United States annex the Republic of Texas. Herrera sent General Mariano Paredes north to deal with the US invasion of Mexican Texas, but Paredes instead marched south and ousted Herrera from power. He replaced Santa Anna as the army's commander after the Battle of Huamantla on 9 October 1847, but the Americans fought their way through Herrera's forces and raised the Mexican siege of Puebla. After the end of the war in 1848, Herrera returned to the presidency, and he had to deal with a cholera epidemic and the Caste War in Yucatan. He also faced Paredes' anti-Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and Leonardo Marquez's pro-Santa Anna uprising, and he turned over the presidency to Mariano Arista in 1851. He died in Tacubaya in 1854.